


now i'm covered in the colors, pulled apart at the seams

by thisismetrying



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Compliant, Color Blindness, Color soulmate, Drug Addiction, Eventual Smut, F/M, Idk what exactly this trope is called, Slow Burn, Smut, Soulmates, and then goes a little beyond canon to post-Moscow, but the soulmate trope where you can't see color until you meet your soulmate, mostly - Freeform, mostly follows canon but with the color/soulmate aspect
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:21:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28995168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisismetrying/pseuds/thisismetrying
Summary: Beth can’t see color. But the chess board and the world that it contains is all black and white, so it doesn’t really bother her.Ironically, it is at a chess tournament that she starts to see color.-or the queen's gambit "you can't see colors until you meet your soulmate au" that no one asked for
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Comments: 173
Kudos: 337





	1. everything is grey

**Author's Note:**

> A "Colors" by Halsey lyrics for a soulmate color au? Groundbreaking.
> 
> Anyway, this is a little different than my other works, it mostly follows the events of canon but with the "you can't see colors until you meet your soulmate" caveat
> 
> Inspired partially by @sadgaymermaids who posted their amazing soulmark au earlier and I was inspired to get started writing on this idea that's been knocking around my mind for a little

Beth is six years old when she first remembers hearing about color.

Her mother is walking around their trailer and she asks Beth to find the blue book for her.

Beth goes to look for it, but becomes frustrated when she can’t find it.

“Mommy, none of the books have the word ‘blue’ on them,” she says.

“No, it’s not called ‘blue,’ it’s the color blue—” Alice starts to say, then stops herself, looking down at Beth. “Oh, I forgot, you don’t see color. It’s called ‘ _Monomial_ _Representations and Symmetric Presentations,_ ’”

Beth, ever curious, asks. “What’s color?” She has never heard of this before. She rolls the word around her tongue.

Her mother shakes her head. “It’s just something some adults see. Things have colors, they make things look different.”

“Look different how? Will I see color?”

“It just looks different. I don’t know.” Her eyes wander to something on the trailer wall. “Go get me that book now, will you?”

She can tell her mother might be working herself up to another one of her states. The states where she cries and throws things into a fire and scares Beth. Beth doesn’t ask any more questions.

-

Still, Beth doesn’t stop being curious about this concept of _color._

Now that she knows to look for it, she finds a book in her mom’s pile that has the word “color,” along with the words “soulmates.”

She sneaks it from the pile (her mother will never notice anyway), but doesn’t tell her mother she’s reading it. Her mother didn’t seem to like when she brought it up.

From the book, Beth learns about color and soulmates.

Everyone is born seeing only black and white and grey. That’s what Beth sees, she understands now. But things have color and there are different types and shades and hues of color, with names like red, green, blue, purple.

You start to see color when you meet your soulmate. (Or within a day, according to the books).

Beth is more interested in the concept of color than she is in the concept of a soulmate (which is supposed to be a person who is your perfect match).

She doesn’t like the idea that other people can see things that she can’t, that they can see some aspect of the world that she can’t.

So she hopes and prays that she’ll meet her soulmate, if only so she can see color.

-

By the time she is taken to Metheun, the concept of color and of a soulmate seems less appealing.

In one of her last raves before putting her in the car and driving to that man’s house, her mother had thrown more stuff into the fire and yelled about stupid, useless soulmates.

Maybe seeing color can make you crazy, Beth thinks.

-

Still, she can’t help but wonder. She thinks it’s unfair that others can see things she can’t. She is an analytical person and she wants to see everything.

Most of the girls at the orphanage can’t see color, but every once in a while, someone comes along who can. They always get adopted out quickly. Beth makes sure to ask them all she can about color before they leave.

Miss Lonsdale can see color though, and when she’s not busy teaching or leading the girls in song, sometimes she’ll entertain Beth’s questions about color, pointing out that the desks are beige or the chalkboard is green.

Jolene can’t see color but she tells Beth that the pill that she likes so much is half green.

-

Beth is in the basement cleaning the erasers when she sees the janitor man playing a game.

She goes up to him, and asks him what the game is called.

She has always been curious and today is no exception.

He tells her and she rolls the word around in her mouth. _Chess._ She likes the way it sounds, has a similar feeling to when she first learned about color.

She asks him to teach her how to play and he refuses, but she does not give up.

So, she watches. Watches for how he moves the pieces, what seem to be the rules, what you can and can’t do. She is fascinated by it.

Finally, he lets her play.

He teaches her the rules she doesn’t know yet and the names for certain things and she absorbs it all like a sponge.

One day, she asks him.

“What colors are the pieces?”

“They’re black and white,” Mr. Shaibel says, moving his rook.

“No, I mean, what _colors_ are they?” Beth asks. Then, she realizes, that Mr. Shaibel might not know, he might not see color. But then again, he knows this game so well, she thinks, that even if he can’t see it himself, he has to know.

“They’re black and white,” Mr. Shaibel repeats.

Beth goes to clarify, to ask her question again.

“—even for people who see color,” he continues.

“Oh.” This is interesting to Beth. She knows that some things are still black and white for people who see color, but it doesn’t seem that anything interesting is black and white. All the interesting things have colors, at least for the people who see it.

But chess is interesting and fascinates her like never before.

Maybe, not everything worthwhile, has to be colorful.

Maybe she can do without color just fine.

-

She likes chess for a number of reasons. She likes it because it’s logical, it has clear rules, and because she’s good at it. She likes that there’s an entire world contained in those 64 squares.

She also likes that it’s in black and white, which means she sees everything. There is nothing about chess that is unavailable to her, nothing that is missing.

-

So Beth’s questions to Miss Lonsdale about color get less and less, and eventually they stop. She is too wrapped up in chess and the 64 black and white squares and pieces to care much about color anymore.

When she is adopted, she is asked if she can see color by Mr. and Mrs. Wheatley, and she says no.

“That’s okay, dearie,” Mrs. Wheatley says to her.

“We can’t either,” Mr. Wheatley throws in and Mrs. Wheatley too-bright smile fades a little.

-

At her new school, Margaret, one of the Apple Pis, very proudly lets anyone and everyone know that she can see color, that she started seeing it on the second day of high school, the day after she met her boyfriend, Johnny. 

A younger Beth would have been jealous, especially that someone her age can see color, but now Beth has chess. And she doesn’t need color for that, to excel at that, to see every part of chess.

Still, it does hurt sometimes when Margaret makes a snide comment about Beth’s mismatched blouse and skirt (how is she or Mrs. Wheatley supposed to know that it clashes?) or Margaret will loudly oohh and ahhh over some magazine cover, talking about the bright colors.

But it doesn’t matter, not really. She likes clothes and the way they look and she comforts herself by reminding herself that most people can’t see color. And _Chess Review,_ the only magazine that matters, is in black and white, just like the game.

-

Beth enters her first tournament with five dollars that Mr. Shaibel sends her in the mail and the confidence of someone whose entered hundred of tournaments. 

She meets D.L. Townes and he is so _handsome_ and he has a nice voice and he’s one of the top ranked chess players in the state (even though she beats him). 

She goes home that night and even though chess should be all that’s on her mind, she can’t help but wonder (maybe wish a little) that she’ll start seeing color soon.

But she wakes up the next day and everything is still black and white and grey, and it remains that way the day after, when she beats Harry Beltik and becomes the Kentucky State Champion.

She’s a little disappointed, but then there’s the feeling of winning and she has the prize money in her hands and she can buy a chess set and a new dress and now she can enter more tournaments.

No, the black and white world of chess isn’t bad at all.


	2. you're spilling like an overflowing sink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cincinnati 1963

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, wow, I'm overwhelmed by the response to the first chapter of this. Thank you all so much for commenting, kudos-ing, and bookmarking. I really hope this lives up to your expectations!
> 
> The next two chapters follow canon and I definitely did struggle with them, so I hope it doesn't read too much like just a summary of the show. I promise things will get more interesting with chapter 4/5 (also, I realized that this is going to be like a 10 chapter fic haha)

It’s the first day of the Cincinnati open tournament when she sees him. She recognizes him because she’s seen his picture on the cover and in the pages of _Chess Review_ countless times.

“He” is Benny Watts, the greatest US player since Morphy (or so some say).

But in the magazines, he doesn’t wear a trench coat and a cowboy hat. (Frankly, Beth thinks he looks a little ridiculous, but she supposes that most geniuses have their eccentricities. She thinks to her obsession with the little pills they started to give her at the orphanage and that she’s continued to sneak from Alma.)

He does wear them now though, as he lounges in a chair, explaining something about the Caro-Kann defense to a captive audience.

She ascends the stairs. “I’d take the knight,” she says, seeing the move with just a glance. She doesn’t know why these men need this explained to them. It’s so simple, so infuriatingly easy to see. No color required, just chess.

“You’re, um,” he starts to say. “Aren’t you that kid from Kentucky who wiped out Harry Beltik?”

If Beth feels anything at being recognized by Benny Watts, she doesn’t show it. She is wholly focused on the game before them, the little black and white squares and the pieces on top of them, making a whole world of their own.  
  


“If you take his knight, then you double his pawns.”

Benny plays the move, and then continues showing off, rapping off names of games and moves.

She is fascinated, not by his explanations (which again, she doesn’t need Benny Watts to see the obvious moves), but by the way he moves the pieces on the board, his long fingers wrapping around the black rook.

Then he’s getting up in a hurry, and he calls her a _little girl_ , and she doesn’t know why (she is still only 16), but she does take offense to that. She can’t wait to beat this man, beat the US Champion.

So she is disappointed when he says he’s not playing and that he’s only come through to see some old friends.

He puts a hand on her shoulder and tells her “good luck.” She doesn’t expect that, and she is briefly taken a back. And then she’s frankly a little more insulted that he had just invaded her space like that, like she was some little girl, like he had a right to touch her like that.

But by the time she can form a comeback, he’s gone and she is left with a tingly feeling where his hand lay on her shoulder.

Well, she’ll beat him someday. She’s sure of it.

-

Beth wakes up on the second day of the tournament and the world is _bright_.

Light filters in through the hotel room curtains and she has to squint. Usually the sun doesn’t bother her, but it is exceedingly bright this morning and it is has a strangeness to it.

She reaches up to rub her eyes and then lowers them back to the soft hotel duvet. The duvet that is now decidedly not just a black and white pattern but has _color._

Color. She can see color now.

She sits bolt upright. Alma is still asleep, snoring softly, having had one too many beers (again) last night.

The room seems to spin around her, the colors of everything, this new sense of hers, assaulting her.

She rushes to the bathroom and splashes water on her face. She looks around, and surely enough, the bathroom is full of color too.

Though she knows the names of colors, she is mostly at a loss for how to describe these new features of her world. What do people call blue? What do people call yellow? What do people call pink?

The sun is yellow, she thinks. She remembers reading about that. That must be what the bright light was. Yellow.

 _Red._ She remembers Miss Lonsdale telling her once that she had very pretty red hair. She looks in the mirror now and sees her hair as never before. She reaches up to touch it, running her fingers through it. The fingers she prizes if only for the surety that she can wield them along the chess board.

She is so wrapped up in looking at everything, trying to remember what colors she can discern when she realizes what seeing color means.

_I’ve got a soulmate._

Shit. A soulmate?

In some ways, the logical part of her brain tells her it makes sense, that she’d find a soulmate here. Chess is her world, her obsession, and any soulmate of hers would have to be the same way.

The other part of her is bewildered. She met _dozens_ of people yesterday, played at least six, any one of them could be her soulmate.

An awful thought occurs to her. What if it was one of the suckers she’d beaten in 20 moves? She hadn’t played anyone who even gave her a semblance of a challenge. _No,_ she thinks, _I couldn’t be soulmates with someone like that._ It must be someone she hasn’t played yet, but met yesterday. 

This brings her to a dilemma. How will she even know who her soulmate is? She can’t exactly go around asking people if they started seeing color without revealing it herself.

And she realizes, she’s not here to find her soulmate. She’s here to play chess and win the prize money and start getting a ranking so she can play more chess.

What does she have to gain from revealing that she can see color now? She is already an anomaly, being a girl at a chess tournament, and she doesn’t want to bring any more attention to herself. Not for those reasons, at least. She wants the attention on her because she’ll beat them all, not because she’s a girl or she now sees color.

No, she won’t mention it to anyone, she resolves. She has a tournament to win.

-

She focuses on chess, beating player after player with deadly precision.

Still, every player she plays, every face she can remember from the first day ( _but there are so many_ ), she looks, tries to figure out if they can see color, and if they can, if they’re her soulmate. But she beats each one handily, without much of a defense from them, and she decides that if these are the options for her soulmate, she’s better off not knowing. 

The only colors that matter are black and white, the black and white of the chessboard and the world contained on the 64 squares.

She supposes it’s for the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
> 
> (also, this fic will mostly follow Beth's perspective, but I am already planning a companion fic from Benny's point of view called "the rest of the world was black and white, but we're in screaming color") because these two live in my mind absolutely rent free and I can't get enough of them


	3. you were red and you liked me cause i was blue

Beth stands by her resolve and focuses on chess.

She is careful not to talk about colors with others, not to describe them. She hasn’t even told Alma. She doesn’t know quite why, she’s sure Alma would be happy for her, but she can’t get the way Alma’s smile faded when Mr. Wheatley had stated so plainly, so simply, that they couldn’t see color.

Still, her fascination with color from youth returns. Maybe it never left her, though, maybe she only put it aside because she feared she’d never get it. She learns what colors there are and how to recognize them from books, and soon even her world of black and white is all the more richer for it.

Now she can see the colors in the clothes she picks out (and to her embarrassment, realizes Margaret was right about clashing colors). She can see that the little pills she steals from Alma are half green.

And if it’s possible, when she looks up at the ceiling at night and plays chess on the ceiling, even though they’re still black and white pieces, the color of the moon glints off them, catching at the pale pink of the ripped canopy and it is _beautiful._ (Chess will always, always be black and white to her, even when they use wood pieces that she can now see are more beige—it will always be black and white to her because of the clarity it provides).

-

Two years go by faster than she can imagine and she gets a ranking and she ascends to a veritable threat in the chess world.

LIFE does an article on her, but to her disappointment, the article is mostly about her being a girl and it doesn’t even mention Mr. Shaibel. She remembers Benny Watts calling her a little girl and she still feels a tiny bit of fury. She hasn’t had the chance to play him. He plays mostly abroad, it seems, and while she has won plenty of tournaments, they’ve mainly been opens for the prize money and she missed the big Las Vegas Open a year ago because Alma was sick. No matter, she knows she’ll beat him one day. Show him that she’s not just a _little girl._

-

Margaret from the Apple Pis invites her over, impressed with Beth’s newfound fame, maybe, or just pressured from the other girls.

Beth doesn’t know why she goes exactly, but she does and it is so very awkward and Margaret asks her about the boys, if she’s found anyone she trades rooks with.

Later, Beth will kick herself for letting the implication of the question fly over her head, but in the moment, she answers honestly, about chess. It is always about chess.

Margaret and the other girls laugh at her and Beth wants to disappear, so she does.

She steals a bottle of whiskey from Margaret’s father and she goes home and gets drunk.

It is only after she’s played several games of chess on the ceiling, when she is feeling good and light, does she think about Margaret’s question again.

“ _Is there anyone you’d like to trade rooks with?_ ”

If only Margaret knew that she could see color. Of course, she could have told her. There’s been more than one occasion where she wants to reveal she can see color, if only to see the shocked look on Margaret’s smug face.

But she’s been so good at keeping it a secret, about keeping her life focused on chess, and not a soulmate, that it’s not worth it.

Still, she thinks about Margaret’s question. She remembers the girlish hope she’d had when she’d come back from the very first day of her very first tournament, right here in Kentucky. How she’d hoped she’d wake up seeing color, how she’d hoped Townes would have come into the cafeteria the next day, also seeing color too.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, she started seeing color in Cincinnati when she’d met dozens, if not a hundred, new people.

 _Maybe, it’s chess that’s really my soulmate_ , she thinks, musing in her drunken, slightly philosophical state. And Cincinnati was the first big tournament. _Maybe it’s chess and tournaments and winning that I’m destined for._

-

Alma is not sick that year and so she gets to go to the Las Vegas Open.

She loves the Vegas atmosphere, the bright lights, the pinks and blues, the fluorescence that seems to illuminate off everything. Even if she has to enjoy the colors of it privately, it’s still nice, and she is glad that she can see color, everything else aside (like the fact that it means she has some random soulmate out there).

Her joy at being in Vegas is multiplied when she realizes that Townes is there. He catches her on the way back from a shopping trip (she positively loves shopping now that she can see color, and now that she has money).

He compliments her, “wow”-ing at her appearance, and even though she’s in a black and white dress (she still prefers that color scheme to all others), her heart leaps for a moment and she wonders if maybe, somehow, the universe had got the timing of her color wrong, and he is her soulmate.

And then he’s inviting her up to her room, ostensibly to write a piece on her for the _Herald,_ but he also wants to play and her heart is in her throat, and she struggles to maintain her usually calm demeanor.

She checks her hair quickly and follows him up and she poses (she has gotten so good at it over the past few years), and she’s kneeling by the bed. He’s dressed sharply, in black and white, but there is something so _warm_ about him, the yellows of the sun reflecting off his shirt, and she thinks that yes, this is what color is made for.

She sucks a breath in when he kneels next to her and he’s touching her hair, and she waits in anticipation, thinking that something is going to happen.

But then Roger comes in and the illusion is shattered and she realizes that no, the universe didn’t get it wrong, that Townes is not her soulmate. Her soulmate is still out there and she has no idea who they are, but it sucks because it’s not Townes, who is this handsome man, who takes her seriously, and who is good (enough) at chess, and oh why, why, why can’t it have been him?

Townes gestures back to the chess board, and Beth resets, like she always does, back to the world of black and white.

-

“You’re Beth Harmon,” a not unfamiliar voice rings out.

She doesn’t need to look to know the voice. For some reason, it’s replayed in her head over and over, a two-minute conversation in Cincinnati, years ago.

“Yes,” she says in reply.

“I saw the piece in LIFE. The game they printed, that was a pretty one, the one with you and Beltik.” She’s not sure if she should be flattered, that the US Champion read about her, read a game of hers. But then, most of the chess world has read that stupid fluff piece by now, so maybe she shouldn’t read anything into it.

The man, still dressed in a cowboy hat and trench coat, which she can now see are truly black (she hadn’t been sure before, if they were just dark colors), saunters over to her. He wears a tangle of silver chains around his neck, adding to the oddness of his look.

“I’m, uh, Benny Watts,” he says. As if she doesn’t know.

“I know. We met a couple years ago in Cincinnati. We didn’t meet, but we spoke,” she says. Cincinnati was an eventful tournament, she thinks to herself wryly.

“Cincinnati?” he asks, his brows furrowed. It seems to him, that it was completely unmemorable.

After a few more niceties, she goes to leave, certain that she’ll play him.

Then he says something that stops her in her tracks.

“You shouldn’t have castled. In your game with Beltik.”

 _What is he talking about?_ “I needed to get the rook out.”

And then that stupid pirate is telling her what she did wrong, to set it up and think it out, how she could have lost her advantage.

But she doesn’t want to set it up and think it out. She has no need to go and revisit past games, especially games that she _won._ And that she’s sure are airtight.

He waves her off, to go play an adjournment, leaving her with a crooked smile and nod, even in the face of her persistence.

So she goes and sets it up and finds that he was _right_ and she finds herself infuriated with Benny Watts again. Stupid, stupid, narcissistic pirate wannabe.

How could he figure out the flaw in her game by just reading about it? She hates it, and she hates him, her fury a burning red.

-

She thinks she hates him even more the next day when they go to shake hands at the final match and he anticipates her move already. Like he knows her.

 _But he knows nothing,_ Beth thinks to herself. She’ll show him, just like she would have shown him in Cincinnati all those years ago.

At first, she is ecstatic, things go according to her plan. She is going to hammer him, she is going to show him.

But then he forces an exchange of queens, and she sees the brutal mistake she’s made.

As the game progresses, it gets worse and worse.

She can feel the blush rise to her cheeks, feel herself getting hot, as she realizes the gravity of the situation, how she won’t be able to get out of it.

She’s glad that she’s certain most people can’t see color, that they can’t see the redness in her cheeks. She prays that Benny Watts can’t see color, can’t see the way her face is flaming up, can’t use it as a tell against her.

It doesn’t matter.

He beats her anyway and it is brutal and she is ashamed and she wants to scream.

Somehow, everything being in color makes it worse. She doesn’t know why, but soon, the bright fluorescent lights are too much, the gaudy mismatched colors of people who don’t know any better, the black and white of Townes (who is so sharp, so fine, compared to Benny’s smudgy black look), it is all too much, and she runs out of the match as fast as she can.

-

She wears a red blouse the next day, as she’s leaving, almost like a scarlet letter. She wears her shame in the only way she knows how: literally and hiding it in plain sight. 

She also thinks that, maybe, just maybe, wearing red will counteract the blueness she feels. She doesn’t know if colors work like that (they probably don’t), but these days, a lot about color and soulmates and heck, even life, don’t make sense.

Townes runs after her, uttering an apology, and she asks him why, and the answer that comes out is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Maybe the universe did know better than to pair her with Townes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> since i'm uploading ch 3 and 4 at the same time, please see ch 4 for end notes/thoughts. thanks for reading!


	4. your mother only smiled on her tv show

She’s wounded from Las Vegas, but she has plenty of other things to do, other games to win.

She has a match in Mexico where Borgov will be playing and she needs to be prepared. So she throws herself into studying, and she also takes up Russian classes at the local college.

She meets Tim there, and he’s decidedly not her soulmate, but he’s available and into her, and she decides to sleep with him.

Beth Harmon has always met anything that comes her way with a battle-ready, challenge-ready mind, and her approach to sex and soulmates is no different. She has decided that whenever she does find out who her soulmate (if she ever finds out), she’ll be ready.

Which means she needs to practice. And who better than to practice with then some random guy she probably will never see again? Yes, it’s a good idea.

At least, it’s a good idea until she’s underneath him and it’s uncomfortable and _god, why is it taking so long?_

He insists that he’s close, so she gazes up at the ceiling and the bit of alcohol and pot she’s had help her to visualize the chess board. She barely plays one move before Tim’s rolling off her, apologizing that he’s really stoned.

It’s funny, she thinks. Sex is almost the opposite of chess.

Chess is natural, intuitive to her. Chess is cerebral, makes you focus so intently on one thing. Chess is beautiful, breathtaking, in its 64 clean black and white squares.

Sex feels foreign, so awkward and unnatural. Sex is hazy. Sex is messy and unrefined, like a bunch of colors mixed together until there’s nothing but uninteresting gray-brown.

-

She has other things to worry about though, like her match with Borgov in Mexico.

Her mother is almost giddy on the plane ride, telling her about a pen pal who is meeting them at the airport.

There’s a glint in her mother’s eye and Beth wonders if Alma thinks Manuel might be her soulmate.

Beth wonders, what it would be like, to see the world without color for that long. To wait that long. To go through so many Tims.

-

She asks her mother, while they’re reading in the room, one of the few times Manuel isn’t present. 

“Is he your soulmate?” Beth doesn’t particularly like Manuel, but she doesn’t dislike him either, and if he’s Alma’s soulmate, she supposes she will have to get used to him.

Alma looks up from her magazine. She sighs. “No,” her tone bittersweet, the edge taken off by a Gibson.

“Why are you hanging out with him then?” Beth demands. She is curious. Why waste time with someone who isn’t your soulmate? (Tim, she thinks, was different. That was for practice).  
  


Alma’s eyes are tired when she looks at Beth and says, plainly, “I know what it’s like to lose. This isn’t winning, but it isn’t losing.”

Beth, who has (almost) always been a winner, doesn’t answer. But she smiles back at her mother and hopes it works out, for her sake.

Manuel disappears after a few days and they don’t speak of soulmates again.

-

The Russians talk about her when they think she’s not there.

She’s glad she took those Russian classes, glad she can hear what they say about her. What they think her flaws, her weaknesses are.

And she hears Borgov. _Losing is not an option for her._

He’s right. Losing is not an option.

-

But sometimes, even when something isn’t an option, it happens any way.

Beth loses to Borgov and it’s almost as if the color drains from the world.

And then, as she’s recounting it to her mother, Alma doesn’t move and then Beth is shaking her and she’s not moving and then there are doctors and Beth can hardly breathe and it feels like everything, all the colors, are fading right before her.

She knows she can still see color, but it doesn’t feel like it matters, it feels like everything has taken a gray cast and it feels like it will always be this way.

When they are rolling the cart away, she asks the doctor for a prescription for Librium and when he tells her that she doesn’t need a prescription, she is glad she can see color so she can simply point to the green pills on the shelf.

-

She buries Alma in a pretty blue dress. Even though Alma couldn’t see color, she thinks that Alma would have liked it.

It’s fitting too. Blue can be such a happy color; the color of babies and spring robins, and bright fluorescent lights. But it can also be a color of such sorrow, like oceans threatening to drown you.

-

Harry Beltik phones her just as she’s stepping into the cold, empty, lonely, gray house, and she invites him to come over, and soon enough they are studying together almost every day, and even if it’s boring to her sometimes, at least she has something to do, someone to talk to.

At least she’s not alone.

-

“Can you see color, Harry?” she asks one day.

“No, I can’t,” he says, looking at her funnily. “I wish I could though,” a note of wistfulness in his tone.

“Hmmm,” she says.

“Can you?” he asks, a slight edge to his voice.

“No,” the lie slipping off her tongue as easy as how the orange and reds of the sunsets melt together.

-

Harry kisses her one night, after she tells him that he can move into the house for free.

The first kiss is awkward and she’s not ready.

Frankly, she’s confused. She took Harry to be more of a hopeless romantic than to kiss someone whose not his soulmate. He’s not one to seek out a Tim.

But then she looks in his face and sees it already clouding at the assumption of rejection and she gets it, sees the “sorry” forming on this lips. And then she gets it. Harry Beltik is scared he won’t ever meet his soulmate. So even though he can’t win, he’s trying not to lose. Like Alma.

It’s been a while since she’s thought of finding her soulmate, she almost takes seeing color for granted these days, sometimes forgets that it means she has a soulmate out there and that she’s met them.

Harry’s kiss reminds her of soulmates and Tim and Russian and awkward sex. But it also reminds herself of her vow to meet her soulmate on completely equal terms, if she ever meets them (again). She’ll need more experience if she’s going to do that, she supposes.

She recomposes herself. “I’m ready now.”

Harry hesitates, like he’s having second thoughts, but she gives an ultimatum. “Now, or never.”

After, when they are in bed, she lights a cigarette and goes back to her book. The experience was, disappointingly, all too similar to her first time. Having sex, she decides, if she had to put a color to it, is simply gray. It’s not unpleasant per se, but she doesn’t get the fuss. Maybe that’s why so many people put a premium on it though, she thinks. If all you can see are black and white, then you have to settle for gray, sometimes.

But she’d rather stick to pure black and white than settle for a loser’s middlegame.

-

Eventually, Harry leaves her with a cautionary warning and Beth isn’t exactly sad, but she does miss the company, and it does feel oddly like a loss.

But she has other things on her mind. 

She has a U.S. Championship to win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so first of all, thank you all so much for the comments, kudos, and bookmarks. I'm really overwhelmed with the response to this story. :) 
> 
> Second, I'm sorry if these two chapters aren't the best, I had a hard time writing them honestly because it mainly follows canon and there's not a lot of Beth/Benny but I SWEAR it is all building up to stuff, and I'm much more excited to write the next chapter with Ohio. 
> 
> I hope this is at least living up to some expectations, and as always, comments are welcome!


	5. you're dripping like a saturated sunrise

“Why, hello, Beth,” the by now familiar voice of a certain cowboy pirate rings out in the college auditorium.

“Why, hello, Benny,” she calls out, only turning to look at him for a second. He’s still dressed in his ridiculous cowboy/pirate get-up, with the black trench coat flowing behind him. She wonders if he knows he chooses to wear all black, basically all the time, and if he does, if he thinks that somehow makes him look tougher. She’d bet money that he got someone who can see color to go shopping with him so he could put together this exact look.

He mentions her game with Borgov and she really doesn’t want to think about it so she tries to brush it off by admitting her foolishness quickly, hoping he’ll leave it at that. But then he’s saying that he knows how it feels, to lose, to be helpless, and she’s surprised. _Is this Benny Watts being vulnerable?_ The thought unsettles her. They are not the type to be vulnerable. And they are especially not vulnerable with each other.

But then the moment passes and he’s asking who she has up next and narcissistically lamenting about the lack of fanfare at the championship and then they’re parting ways and she tells herself to focus.

Except, she doesn’t really need to focus because even though these are the best ranked players in the country, she beats all her matches in the first few days with ease, it’s like she’s 12 again and playing against the high school chess club, it’s laughably easy. She thinks she may even make one of the men cry.

What she does focus on, though she is loathe to admit it to herself, is Benny Watts and his stupid cowboy hat and stupid trench coat and the way they’re circling each other. The way the tournament is set up, they won’t play each other until the final match (and let’s face it, the first few days are really a formality, everyone there knows it’s going to come down to Watts vs. Harmon). She doesn’t know if it’s her nerves, if it’s the lingering feeling of losing, but she feels his dark shadow looming over her even when he’s halfway across the room.

-

After the third day, they’re due for a break, and she strides out of the auditorium, ready to go study some more, to make sure she beats Watts this time. 

She spies Benny out of the corner of her eye and makes her way over, her curiosity winning out over her desire to not feed his ego.

It seems he’s feeding his ego enough with the school reporter, who looks like he should be in middle school. Telling them to read his book, get in shape.

If she felt his presence all these days, he must have too, because he looks up almost instinctively when she approaches, leaving the poor reporter boy stammered by Benny’s all too casual insult.

She doesn’t know why she went over there, almost as if there was a magnetic pull, so she goes to walk away, but he easily catches up to her.

They trade barbs like they’ve doing it forever, even though they’ve only had at most a dozen conversations.

He issues an invitation for speed chess in the cafeteria and he looks oddly put out when she declines.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Ohh, that depends on whether or not the answer’s going to give you an edge,” he says, his face intensely curious, waiting for her question. She’s put off by his answer, it’s almost like he has a question in mind. What he thinks she’ll ask is beyond her, though.

“Seriously? Are you that nervous?” _Why the hell would Benny Watts be nervous around me?_ She thinks, their last match in Vegas coming to the forefront of her mind.

“Was that the question?” he asks, his face looking somewhat shocked and…disappointed? No, not disappointment, she decides. What would he have to be disappointed about?  
  


She continues with her question. “No. What’s with the knife?”

Now he simply looks confused. “What do you mean?”

She rolls her eyes. “I mean, why do you carry it around?”  
  


He goes to move his coat, to display the knife more proudly. “This is for, uh, protection.” He says it like he’s actually convinced of it too. _Arrogant ass,_ Beth thinks inwardly.

“From what?” She doesn’t bother keeping the incredulity out of her voice.

“From whatever.” _From whatever? What could Benny Watts possibly need protection from?_ She almost pushes on it, if just to needle him a little, but then he’s walking away with a “Study hard.”

She will, she resolves to herself, as she watches his black-clad figure stalk away. She can’t help herself. Even though Benny Watts is dressed in all black, he’s still the most vibrant figure on campus. 

-

“Beth!” Benny’s voice echoes throughout the busy cafeteria. Beth looks over and sure enough, it’s Benny, and his boyish face is, _excited,_ to see her.

She didn’t come here for him, but she finds herself walking toward the table before she can even really think. _It’d be impolite not to,_ Beth rationalizes (but when has she ever really cared about manners?)

And before she knows it, he’s talked her into a game of speed chess. Which he handily wins. And then as she’s forking over the five dollars, another, and then another. And another.

She can feel her face getting red, getting flushed as she loses and loses. She doesn’t know why she keeps acquiescing to his “again” but there’s something so seductive in that one word. It’s goading and soft and challenging all at once. And she has never been one to back down from a challenge.

She wonders what they must look like to the spectators of college kids. Whether any of them can see colors, and if they can see just how flushed she’s getting.

She idly wonders if Benny can see color, and if the red on her cheeks is an obvious tell.

Soon, she’s out of cash and out of pride, and she leaves the dining room in a fluster, making her way madly back to the dorm room.

She touches her skin and she’s feverish and she’s sure if she looked in the mirror, her cheeks would be pink.

She doesn’t know why Benny Watts seems to have this effect on her. But he does, and she has got to be careful around him. She won’t let him mess up her plans of being US Champion.

-

She’s sitting on the quad, taking in the lovely greenery and idyllic college setting. How awful it would be, she thinks, to go to a college like this and only be able to see black and white.

By now, seeing color to her is really second nature, and she hardly gives a thought to the supposed soulmate that accompanies the sense.

God, or whoever or whatever powers there may be, gave her the gift of chess, and maybe they also decided to give her the gift of color. Maybe she doesn’t have a soulmate. Maybe, as she’s thought so many times before, chess is her soulmate.

She knows it’s not a real answer, but she doesn’t have the mental capacity to really think about any potential soulmate that might be out there. Her life for the past few years has been solely focused on chess and she intends to keep it that way.

“It’s gonna be you or me,” the voice that seems to always sneak up on her says.

She turns and sure enough, Benny is approaching the bench, once again dressed in his cowboy/pirate outfit.

A conversation starts and they trade lines again, like they’ve been doing it forever. To her surprise, he calls her the best player there.

Throughout their conversation, Beth makes a concentrated effort not to look at him, because if she does, all she’ll look at is his pale blonde hair set against the greenery and how _nice_ it looks. It should make him look washed out, especially against the backdrop of his black clothes, but it doesn’t. It’s that rich, vibrant quality of his again. She doesn’t quite know how he gets it, but she knows it makes her want to reach out and touch his hair. 

Out of the corner of her eyes, she can see that his gaze lands intensely on her for most of the conversation.

Finally, she faces him straight on.

“Do you ever go over games in your head? When you’re alone? I mean, play all the way through them?” Even though she’d planned this question in her head, the fact that she went through with it surprises her. She’s never told anyone this, implied it to anyone but Jolene. It’s just as intimate as asking someone if they see color, of admitting you see color. More, she thinks, because this actually matters.

He looks at her like she just asked him if he breathes or eats or drinks. “Doesn’t everybody?”

-

They’re at the bar when he asks her to come to New York. The lights are dim, bathing them both in a warm yellow light.

She reaches out to touch his pale blonde hair, finally, again, like a magnet drawing her into him. His hair is golden, like fine silk. He shuts her down, apparently has more interest in Moscow and Paris than sex. She drinks from the bottles the accommodating bartender is keeping stocked.

When she punts, he goes to take the beer from her.

“When do you go to Paris?” he asks.

“In five weeks.” Being with Benny makes her nervous, like she has a sixth sense. She needs to dull it. She reaches back for the beer.

“Well, you’ll need a good trainer,” he says. “Not Harry Beltik. Someone better, someone more mature.” An odd edge tinges his voice when he mentions Beltik. She wasn’t aware that they knew each other personally. Or how he knew that Harry had trained her. Whatever.

She can see what he’s getting at, but for the life of her she doesn’t know why. Still, she wants him to say it.

“Who’d you have in mind?” she turns to face him.

He doesn’t back down. “Can you come to New York?” He’s facing her now too and he catches her eye and it’s almost like there’s some unspoken thing that he’s trying to communicate but she doesn’t know what it is.

She looks away. “I don’t know.”

“You can sleep in my living room, and you can leave for Paris from there,” he says, almost earnestly. Benny Watts, the man who always has a court of admirers around him, is being _earnest_ with her.

Yet, he won’t sleep with her, it seems, if his rejection of her compliment earlier is anything to go by.

This man is so _frustrating._

But then he’s saying that she’s the best there is, and it’s almost like he believes in her, and it fills her with a warm feeling, and it was nice having Harry there to train her, and besides, Benny is at least attractive and can keep up with her, so maybe going to New York wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

She finds herself saying yes, despite her better judgement. Benny seems satisfied, excited even.

  
Before he leaves, he pauses, gives her a withering look, and says, “Oh, and about sex?”

She looks up, curious for his answer. He puts his cowboy hat on.

“Forget it.”

-

The drive to New York is surprisingly pleasant. They sing along to the radio, play mental chess, and practice Russian.

Benny lectures her on reading the footnotes and she gets slightly annoyed, but she can’t stay

Beth’s never been on a road trip and she likes how green the trees are and how red the sunrises are. And then, it starts transitioning to the city, and the lights are so bright even though it’s dark and it’s beautiful, almost like the first time she saw color. She’s sure she has an awestruck look on her face.

She almost doesn’t notice that he looks over at her with the same expression.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm having so much fun writing this fic. I'm hoping to finish it up this weekend (I actually already have the last two chapters written but need to write the middle parts lol). 
> 
> (Also pray for me as I try to write the next chapter and ~maybe~ write smut)


	6. i've only felt religion when i've lied with you

Beth thinks that Benny must really not be able to see colors because his apartment is what you would call _drab_.

She’s pretty sure that anyone with working eyes can see that. Even those without color.  
  


It’s a concrete box, basically. The walls are an unflattering off-white the floor is gray. The couch cushions (that don’t have an accompanying couch) are black. There is a filmy layer of gray covering the kitchen. Even his bedsheets are fucking gray.

She chooses to focus on the lack of a couch. _Where is she going to sleep?_

Her unasked question is answered when he emerges from his room with a blow-up mattress.

“I thought I was gonna get a couch,” she says.

He looks at her, shirtsleeves rolled up enticingly (again, they’re gray, but on Benny the charcoal stands out in a nice way), and says “I said living room.”

_True,_ he did say that. She’d been too busy thinking about Paris and Moscow and his hair to pay too close attention to his words. _I’ll have to pay closer attention._

-

New York is different.

She likes the busy streets, the lights, the windows with fashion displays. She likes how the splotches of color she can see stand out all the more against the dreary gray backdrop of endless skyscrapers and smog and concrete.

And she likes training with Benny.

She would never admit it to him, but she enjoys their training (for the most part).

It’s a bit tedious (and yes, boring) sometimes, playing games that have already been played, over and over again, almost like painting the same part of a canvas with the same color repeatedly, but she has to admit, she is learning a lot.

Studying games of chess, analyzing every single move and every single possible way the game can go is like studying a great work of art. The more you look at it, _really_ look, not just gaze at it, the more you see. But it’s hard work. She supposes that’s why Benny calls it “workman-like” chess.

-

She watches him sometimes, when she wakes up, before he notices she’s awake. She reclines on the uncomfortable little air mattress and watches him move about the kitchen, his floral robe billowing behind him.

She wonders if he knows just how colorful it is, how bright it is, how much it stands out from the rest of the dreary apartment. Wonders if anyone’s ever told him that.

The thought of someone else, someone else who could _see color_ in his apartment stabs at gut in an ugly manner and she doesn’t quite know what to make of it. So she puts it far, far back in her mind, along with memories from Methuen and chess problems that never come up in actual gameplay and Harry’s warning to her.

She gets up for another long day contained within the world of 64 black and white squares.

-

She finds something Reuben Fine missed in _Endgame Analysis,_ and something _Chess Review_ didn’t pick up.

“Benny,” she calls out. She needs to show this to him.

“Fine missed one,” she says, letting the satisfaction creep into her voice. He comes over and perches on the chair next to her.

“Look, ready? She moves the pieces. “Black does this with the knight.”

He studies it for a moment and then an impressed look graces his face. “Yeah?” Benny says.

“It’s good, it’s good,” she says, feeling light and giggly for a moment.

“Yeah,” Benny says. “Huh.”

He puts his hand on her shoulder, almost like he did all those years ago at a tournament in Cincinnati. She suppresses a simultaneous shiver and desire to lean back into his hand.

When he gets up, she stares after him and it takes her longer to get back to her analysis than she’d like to admit.

-

“The kind of chess that’s played by the best players in the world: the Soviets.” Benny’s pontificating again on his thoughts on chess and the chess world. Beth is flipping through a copy of one his international magazines, half listening.

He leans forward in his chair, the light catching his mussed hair. He must be about to make a serious point, with the intense way he’s looking at her. “And you know why they’re the best players in the world?”  
  


She doesn’t feel in a very serious mood. “They have the best suits?”

“It’s because they play together as a team. Especially during adjournments,” he says intensely. There’s a pause and for a moment, Beth isn’t sure where the conversation (if you can call it that) is going.

“They help each other out.” He leans back into the chair, resuming his casual pose.

He continues, “Us Americans, we work alone because we’re all such individualists. We don’t like to let anyone help us.” She knows he’s talking about chess, but in the back of her mind, she wonders if there’s something she’s missing, something else she’s supposed to be picking up on.

But she’s tired. She yawns. “You’re helping me now,” she responds.

“Am I? Because it looks more like I’m putting you to sleep,” he says, pointing out the obvious.

“I’m sorry. I’m tired.” She is. This _workman-like_ chess does take a toll on you. “I should probably go to bed.” She gets up to pump her bed up.

“What, and miss out on all the fun?” Benny says, his tone light and easy.  
  


“I’ll survive,” she says automatically, a defense mechanism brought from years of missing out on all the _fun,_ whether it be from being barred from playing chess in the basement with Mr. Shaibel, social clubs, or pretty dresses before they had money.

Then the words hit her. “What fun?”

As if on cue, there’s a knock on the door. “I wonder who that could be,” Benny asks aloud, even though Beth knows he’s poking fun at her expense. Sometimes, she really wants to slap him.

Then in a flurry, before she can really process what’s happening, he’s introducing her these strangers: Wexler, Levertov, and Cleo. Wexler and Levertov, she thinks, are just like the rest of the dull men she’s played over the years, but there’s something special about Cleo. She is like a neon warning sign, a little too bright but you can’t take your eyes off of her just the same. Her sparkly gold top probably helps.

She declines a drink and she doesn’t think she imagines the shine in Benny’s eyes.

When she goes over to set the food down on the coffee table, she gets the feeling that she walked into something, some conversation. Benny has a curious look on his face, like an unanswered question hangs around her, like it’s following her.

“What?”

“Let’s do a simultaneous,” Benny says. She rolls her eyes. _Of course it’s about chess._

Wexler asks about a time control and Beth surprises herself about speed chess.

Benny is resistant at first, but Beth wants, no _needs_ , redemption. She’s still not entirely over their Ohio cafeteria rounds, even if she did beat him for what really mattered two days later. And she especially resents it when he tries to remind her with a “You’re not so good at that, remember?”

She adds in the enticement of a bet that she bets Benny won’t be able to resist. He does love a good gamble. (She might also put in a (only somewhat serious) threat of kicking him in the crotch in order to persuade him.)

Finally, after getting out the boards and setting up the pieces and the clocks, they’re ready. Her against three of them. Including Benny Watts.

-

She beats them all. Thoroughly.

_(Pretty baby, I never knew such a thrill)_

Georgie Fame’s “Yeh Yeh” plays in the background on the radio.

_(And there’ll be no one else in the world alive, except you and me)_

She beats Wexler and Levertov easily, toppling their kings in mere minutes. Benny takes a little longer, but not much.

_(Just thought I’d tell you cause I’m trembling still)_

“Again,” she demands, insistent.

The game goes the same way.

It’s long, elegant fingers whisking like lightning, the black and white of the board blurring, eyes catching for just a moment, racing toward climax, and endgame.

“Again.”

Benny looks up to her, stares at her straight in the eyes. “No.”

The moment hangs in the air, tense for a moment. Then, Benny leans back. “Well, kid,” he says in that obnoxious tone of his. “I think you’ve got it.”

And Cleo is clapping and everyone else is clapping and she finds herself grinning.

-

Benny locks up the door, and then he’s looking at her and snapping her fingers and she can’t decipher what he’s thinking. Which catches her by surprise. By now, she’s gotten fairly good at reading Benny, his responses, his thoughts.

“What?” she asks, leaning against the cold metal railing.

He looks at her for a brief second, opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it. Instead, he descends the stairs. “Nobody has done that to me in fifteen years.”

This pleases her, sending a warm feeling to her chest. “Not even Borgov?” she teases.

He takes it seriously. “Not even Borgov.”

“And I’m sober as a judge,” she says, the feeling of satisfaction only rising. “As Alma would say.”

Benny looks at her for a long moment, eyes finding hers. They’re shining and even though she knows they’re brown, she swears she can see little flecks of gold in them. Or maybe it’s admiration. His lips part and she thinks _This is it._ She parts her lips in anticipation.

But then he pulls his gaze from hers, saying “I, myself, am not.”

And then he’s walking away from her, with a hasty, “Night.”

She stands there for a second, torn between disappointment and chastising herself. What did she think was going to happen? She shakes it off and goes to blow up her bed.

“Wait,” he says, grabbing her arm as she walks past his bedroom door. “Hey.”

She looks down at his hand, covering her upper arm, at the contrast of complexions. His slightly golden skin, her slightly rosy skin.

She looks up and meets his eyes, the flecks (she can’t decide what color they are, or if they’re even actually there), still there. “Yes?”

He hesitates. Opens and closes his mouth twice in the span of milliseconds.

“Do you still like my hair?”

-

It’s like all of her senses are activated at once, all at the same time, all pushed to the limit.

There’s sight. Benny, his hair falling over his lust-filled eyes (yes, the flecks were the signs of lust, she decides). The flat pane of his stomach as he goes to pull his t-shirt over his head, mussing his hair. The golden crown of his head between her thighs.

There’s sound. His breathing. Her breathing. The pop of her lips as she lets go of his. The slick of their bodies together. The whispered _oh gods,_ the _mores_ the _yes, just like thats_.

There’s taste. Benny’s lips as she kisses them. His tongue with just the barest hint of champagne on it. His skin.

There’s smell. Benny’s aftershave, which she finds almost as intoxicating as any beer she’s had. His bedsheets. Sex mingled with perfume and cologne.

There’s the touch. His skin is hot to the touch. Her own just as feverish skin. The connection of their bodies. His fingers on that bundle of nerves that has her crying out, arching for more contact.

It’s like she’s a king in checkmate, her opponent reaching and tipping her over. (This is the _only_ way she wants her king tipped over, she decides).

And _color,_ it’s almost as if color is a sense all by itself.

It’s the pale pink of Benny’s lips, getting redder where she bit them, the blood rushing to them.

It’s the red handprints she imprints on his shoulder blades as she grips them while he parts her with his tongue.

It’s the golden blonde of his hair that she threads her fingers through as he kisses her hungrily, fiercely.

It’s the endless brown of his eyes as he sinks into her, like they’re drowning in each other at the same time.

It’s his voice, a deep blue like the ocean that is whispering a chant of her name, strong and endless and for eternity.

She catches his eye and they hold eye contact for a minute and she can see all the colors flickering in his brown eyes, somehow they’re all there, making them seem more alive than ever, like they’re a doorway to his mind.

And he’s looking back and her and she feel like she might fall apart just from his stare.

She gets the feeling that he wants to say something, what he’s been trying to say all night. That he just doesn’t know how to say it.

  
But then he pulls away, pulls back and whispers softly, hoarsely, “Turn around,” as if the eye contact is too much.

She’s a bit taken aback, but she does it, and then he is sinking into her again, and she forgets all about it, can only think about the feel of him, the sight of him, the sound of him, the smell of him, the color of him.

And when she falls apart, a rainbow dances before her eyelids.

-

She was wrong. Sex isn’t the opposite of chess. Sex with Benny is exactly like chess. It’s moves and counter moves, careful attention to your partner’s every move, it’s natural, it’s intuitive, it’s focused. Focused on her and Benny and their bodies, moving together, together, almost like they’re playing as a team. _So that’s what it’s supposed to feel like._

-

“You should play the Sicilian,” he pants against her back, his breath ghosting over her skin. She can feel him swallow, still catching his breath.

Beth stiffens. _That’s what he wanted to say all night?_

“What?” Did she hear him right?

“In your game with Borgov, you should play the Sicilian,” he clarifies.

“Why? That’s what he’s so good at,” she says, shifting under him. Her mind is running through the possibilities, the pros and cons of playing it against Borgov.

“It’s also what you’re most comfortable with,” he says. “You should always play your line, never his. You play what’s best for you.” He says it confidently, but there’s something else in his voice. Almost like he’s trying to convince himself of the last part.

There it is again. Back where the night started. Where she’s not sure they’re still talking about chess. Or if she wants to be talking about her impending match with Borgov right now.

Beth lifts her head. “…thank you.”

Maybe she needs to give him an opening. Maybe he just doesn’t see one on the board yet. An opening for what, she doesn’t quite know.

“Anything else?” Her question hangs in the air.

She adjusts, ever so slightly. It’s warm, almost too warm. Like the red flush from Benny’s body is seeping into her skin.

“One more thing. They never say check at the big tournaments.”

_Is he fucking serious?_ “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, very,” he says seriously, single-mindedly. Almost non-chalantly. “They never lay their kings down, either.”

_This is what he chooses to talk about?_

“I meant, are you serious? This is what you’re thinking about right now?” Suddenly, she’s cold, too cold. Like the color from their afterglow is draining from her skin. 

_So much for giving him an opening._

She throws him off of her, curling up under the sheets. She lets all the color seep out of her.

“Goodnight Benny.”

She hears the confusion in his voice but she doesn’t care. “…Goodnight.”

-

In the morning, she wakes to a cold bed, gray sheets surrounding her.

She wanders out to the kitchen, where Benny places a warm cup of coffee in her hands, per their usual routine.

She goes to shower and to think, while he gets dressed.

The sex had been so…well, it was nothing like she’s ever experienced. Not with Tim. Not with Harry. It was everything books and movies and girls gossiping in bathrooms at school had made it out to be. To be quite honest, Beth’s not sure how it could get better, even with a soulmate.

But then Benny had to go and ruin it.

It’s not that she’s upset that he talked about _chess_ (after all, she had just beenthinking about it. She is always, always thinking about chess and she expects nothing less from Benny). She’s upset that he’d started talking about _Borgov_ of all people and that he talked about it in such a _practical_ and _prudential_ way as if they didn’t just have the most mind blowing sex. At least she’d been thinking about chess and sex. Sex and chess.

Whereas he’d gone on talking about chess and her upcoming match, as if they were still simply sitting at his card table that passed for a dining table. Like he still had only seen her in the same black and white as always. As just another (albiet brilliant) chess player. And even though she can’t really fault him for not being able to see color, it still stings. 

She saw him in screaming color last night and she won’t soon forget it.

-

When she’d asked him if he played through games all the way in his head, back in Ohio, she thought that was the most intimate they’d ever get.

She was wrong.

The most intimate they get is not that question. It is not kissing. It is not sex. It’s not even physically touching. 

  
The most intimate they get is when they play. When they play as themselves, just them, not recreating a grandmaster game or going over each move painstakingly. When they play as themselves, when there are no timers or set rules. When it is just them and their wits against each other, move and countermove. Exchanging pieces for pieces. A pawn for a pawn. A knight for bishop. A rook for knight. A queen for a queen. One color for another. Chasing the king.

Each move, Beth watches their hands as they flit over the pieces. It’s like deciding which part of a lover to touch first. And when they finally get in a checkmate, it is like a release, a rush. At least Beth thinks so.

-

They keep sleeping together and for the most part, she enjoys it. She always comes and that’s way more than she can say than any of her other partners.

But there is still that distance of his sometimes. The distance of words unsaid, of questions unasked. She doesn’t give another opening and neither does he.

-

Beth is good at keeping the fact that she can see in color a secret. She’s done it for years now.

But with Benny, sometimes she almost slips.

When they’re out in the park playing on one of those stone boards, sometimes she’ll stop and see a bluebird fly over them, and she’ll have an urge to point it out to Benny, exclaiming about how pretty the blue looks against the green of the trees.

Or when they’re in bed and she’ll have an urge to comment on how positively golden his hair looks.

But she doesn’t. She bites her tongue just in time, swallows the words down.

With Benny, it seems so natural to share her worldview, whatever she’s thinking. Often, she doesn’t even need to share at all. It’s like he just knows. As he said once, they see things the same way.

It makes her a little sad (a little more alone) to think that they don’t see the world in _exactly_ the same way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for not updating sooner! I had a blast writing this chapter (and going back and re-watching all the Benny Watts apartment scenes lol)
> 
> Comments very much welcomed, as always!


	7. art is not what i create, what i create is chaos

Paris, Beth thinks, is even better than New York.

At least, as a city. The streets are cleaner, everything is brighter, and the fashion is impeccable.

The fashion must be top notch, Beth thinks, because of all the soulmates that flock to Paris. They do call it the City of Love after all.

But it is lonely, and she can’t help but miss the days cooped up inside a basement apartment, playing game after game, the vibrancy of the person who resided there making up for any drabness of the apartment.

-

The invitational is a round robin and her match versus Borgov is scheduled for the last day.

She is good, so good, when she gets there at first, staying in her room and studying at night, drinking tea instead of wine.

Sometimes, she gets the urge to call him, talk it through with him, play a game with him. But international calls are expensive and she doesn’t feel like she has a good enough reason to. So she doesn’t.

And then Cleo calls from the hotel lobby and asks her for a drink and it all goes to shit.

-

Cleo is too much, praising her and calling her beautiful. Cleo, who is so elegant, so worldly, and a _literal model._

“I don’t see myself that way,” Beth responds to Cleo. And it’s true. Beth has never thought of herself as beautiful, or attractive, or really in terms of her physical attributes. She thinks her most interesting feature is her red hair, and most people can’t see that. She stubs out her cigarette, watching the orange embers turn to gray ash.

“Then you are blind,” Cleo says. Abruptly, she asks. “Do you like to fuck?”

Beth blushes. “Cleo,” she says, looking away. She’s going to need more to drink for this conversation.

“What?” Cleo asks in that authoritative tone of hers, like her question is a simple, every day question. “I’ll make it easy for you. Did you like to fuck Benny?”

Beth lowers her drink and looks at Cleo. “Sometimes.” And it’s the truth. She did like to fuck Benny. But sometimes, it was so overwhelming, too overwhelming. The sights, the sounds, the tastes, the smells, the touches. The _colors._ When she fucked Benny, it was like she was on fire, in the middle of a supernova, and sometimes she felt like she might die and go blind from all the colors she felt. Fucking Benny was a whole sensory experience. Sometimes, though, lying there in the silence of the afterglow, she’d feel as though something was _missing_. What, she didn’t know. Maybe it would just always be an effect of having sex with people who aren’t your soulmate, she thinks. 

“How romantic,” Cleo snorts. “And have you ever been in love?”

The question catches Beth off guard. She blinks down, taking just a second to recompose herself. “Not with Benny,” she says, taking a sip of her drink.

No, she thinks, she wasn’t in love with Benny. He was too much like herself to be in love with. And Beth is not a narcissist. In fact, most days she hates herself.

Cleo doesn’t seem surprised. “Of course not,” Cleo scoffs. “No woman can compete with Benny’s love for himself.”

Cleo’s right, Beth thinks. Almost. No one could compete with Benny’s love for _chess._ He’d proved that enough after their first time.

Beth takes another swallow of her drink.

Cleo interprets this as a sign to push. “So we are still in love?”

Beth looks up at Cleo. She’s not sure she quite understands the question. She’s not sure she’s in love with anyone, or ever has been. Except chess.

“What’s his name?” Something in Cleo’s voice is seductive, smooth, enthralling. It makes Beth want to answer any question she asks. Even if she doesn’t really know the answers. Even though she might lie. She wants to please this woman, this beautiful, gorgeous woman with sleek black hair and Parisian style.

But she doesn’t think Cleo would understand if she said chess. In fact, she really only thinks one person would understand her true answer. So instead, she looks down, her mind flicking through everyone she’s associated the word _love_ with, ever. Her mother. Jolene. Alma. Townes. Only one of those was ever a romantic love. Or a hope for a romantic love.

“Townes,” she says.

And while it might not be a completely honest answer, it is somewhat the truth. She’s never really gotten over Townes’ rejection, the wrongness of his words as she left Las Vegas. It’s not about Townes, per se, but to explain all that would be too much. So she leaves the rest unsaid and settles on his name.

“To unrequited love.” Cleo is a romantic, it seems. She raises her glass, “And to stupid men.”

She’s had plenty of those in her life. “Exactly.” Beth says. She ignores how the image of a stupid cowboy-pirate appears in her mind. They clink drinks.

“Let’s see how many lies they tell,” Cleo says, before she’s approaching the men who have been eyeing them the whole time.

-

After they con drinks out of the men and hear many lies, Beth and Cleo retreat to Beth’s room (to the disappointment of the men). They fuck and it is an entirely different kind of experience.

It is not the “oh god, when will this be over?” experience she had with Tim. It is not the awkward thrusting and soft apologies of Harry. It is not the vibrant, overwhelming, immersive experience of Benny.

It soft, muted, like a faded watercolor.

It is nice all the same.

After, they lie there, side by side.

“Can you see color, Cleo?” Beth asks.

Cleo turns on her side and looks at Beth. “Oui,” she says, arching her perfectly plucked eyebrows.

Beth is surprised. She’d expected the answer to be no. But then again, someone who lived as vibrantly, as boldly as Cleo must see color, she thinks.

Beth drums her fingers against the silk bedsheets. “Do you know who your soulmate is?”

“Oui,” Cleo says, smirking.

This really surprises Beth. She’s never heard of anyone who sees color _and knows who their soulmate is_ that goes around sleeping with other people. Not that she’s had that much exposure though, she thinks idly.

“Then why’d you just fuck me?” She doesn’t mean for it to come out, but it does, and she finds she is intensely curious.

Cleo smiles at her, nestling her head into the satiny pillow, her black hair standing out aginst the shine of the sheets. “Because I wanted to, mon Cherie.”

“Does your soulmate know?” It seems, all walls are down between them. It’s always easier to ask such questions, to push such things, when you are drunk, she supposes.

“Know that I’m his soulmate or know that I fuck other people?” Cleo asks frankly.

Beth doesn’t know why, but she gets the urge to blush. “Both, I guess.”

“Oui. They do.”

“They?” Beth is curious now.

“Arthur and Hilton, you met them in New York.”

“They’re your soulmates?” Beth asks, not able to hide her surprise. She would not expect the two boys, the two chess nerds she’d met in New York to be soulmates with someone as lovely and elegant as Cleo. Somehow, it didn’t fit in her mind.

“Yes. Why else would I be with two such silly little boys?” Cleo laughs.

“I thought you could only have one of them,” Beth says. She’s fairly sure that she read somewhere that it’s only possible to have one soulmate. That’s what made soulmates so special.

Cleo laughs again and Beth feels slightly embarrassed. “Oh, well, only one of them is _my_ soulmate,” she clarifies.

“What?”

“We all started seeing color on the same day. One of them is my soulmate, and the other is someone else’s, but we are all happy, so it does not matter so much,” Cleo elaborates.

This seems strange to Beth. But then, she considers her own circumstance. Not as strange as having given up on finding your soulmate, she thinks. Of resigning your soulmate, who makes you see colors, to a black and white board of 64 squares. Still, she asks, “You don’t feel the need to find out which one it is?”

“Why? Two of them is better than one.” Cleo had said as much in New York.

“Don’t they want to know?”

“Not really. They are happy with the situation as well.” Cleo adds. “We are also all free to fuck other people.”

“Hmmm,” Beth murmurs. The effects of the alcohol are starting to take over, becoming more obvious. “Cleo, how did you know?”

“I saw color, how do you think?”

The answer is obvious, but Beth is searching for something more. She doesn’t quite know what though. “Tell me about it.”

Cleo sighs, shifting into a more comfortable position. “You remember when I told you that I met them in Paris after a bad breakup?”

“Yes,” Beth shifts on the bed. “You said you were mesmerized by Benny.” That line of Cleo’s had played in her head often, though she didn’t know why. But she got it, she understood it, somehow. Especially after she’d fucked Benny.

Cleo shifts closer to Beth. “Ah, and indeed, I was.”

“Hmm? I don’t get it,” Beth says. Her brain is getting fuzzy, the thoughts a little cloudy.

“I was mesmerized by Benny at first, that is true. And then when I started to see color the next day after meeting them, I thought it was Benny,” Cleo explains.

This new to her. _Are Benny and Cleo soulmates?_ Beth thinks and the thought makes her stiffen. She quickly shakes herself out of it. No, Cleo just said her soulmate was Levertov or Wexler. Besides, she’s certain that Benny can’t see color. If he could, he wouldn’t have retreated to chess so soon after they’d had sex that first time. “But it wasn’t?” she asks, just to be sure.

“No,” Cleo says, maybe a bit sadly.

“Didn’t you know though?” _Aren’t you supposed to know?_

Cleo, luckily, does not have inhibitions about sharing. “No, I thought that maybe he was hiding it. It would have been a very Benny-like thing to hide that he started to see color, don’t you think?”

The question hangs in the air. Beth’s not sure quite how to answer that.

She shifts awkwardly and clears her throat. Her head is starting to spin. “Yes.”

Cleo seemingly doesn’t notice, the effects of the drinks also catching up to her. “But alas, it was not to be. I told him a few weeks after we started our _dalliance_ and he told me he did not see color, but that Arthur and Hilton had started to. And so I tested my luck out with them and could not decide.”

“Decide?” Beth asks. _What is there to decide?_

“We all get to decide, a little. Whether we tell others,” Cleo says, almost having a smirk in her eyes. “Whether we tell the other person, whether we be with that person.” She shrugs.

Beth thinks Cleo is wise. But it could also be the alcohol. “Hmmm,” she says, her throat getting try.

“I will admit, I was more than a little disappointed that Benny was not my soulmate, but it is for the best. As I told you, no woman can compete with Benny’s love for himself. If it were possible, he would have been born seeing color,” Cleo says, throwing her head back with laughter, her joke apparently more funny than Beth can catch onto right now.

Beth is still pensieve, thinking about Cleo’s words. “What Benny did to you was very cruel,” Beth says. “Not telling you that it wasn’t him right away.”

“Ah,” Cleo waves her hand in the air. “It is ancient history. Over and done.”

They lay in silence for a bit more.

“Can you see color, Beth?”

Cleo’s voice is so inviting, warm like honey, that for a moment, Beth thinks about telling the truth. But even she is not drunk enough for that. “I need a bath,” she says, getting up.

-

She wakes in a start the next day, with a pounding in her head and a pounding on the door and _fuck_ she’s late, late for the most important match of her life.

Borgov beats her and her brain has a hard time piecing it together at first but then she does and she feels sick, sick, sick.

When she sees that she’s lost, that any move she’ll make will lead to the inevitable check mate, she feels the color drain from her face. She feels it drain from her world, and though she can still technically see color, everything takes on a gray tint, as if covered with a filmy veil on a rainy day.

-

She dreads the call, but knows she has to make it. She is at a layover stop at an airport, on her way back to Kentucky. She needs to go home, go home to the familiar pastel palette, and lick her wounds.

Benny hints that he knows she was less than sober at her match with Borgov. Beth doesn’t think it would make a difference, the way seeing color doesn’t make a difference in chess.

“What time do you get in? I can come pick you up,” he says.

 _Oh._ He thinks she’s coming back to New York. Well, that was what they had agreed to. Before Paris. Before Cleo. Before she _lost._

“I’m going back to Lexington,” she tells him finally. “I need to be alone.”

“That is the opposite of what you need,” Benny states. He states it like it’s a fact, like it’s a foregone conclusion that she should be there in New York. With him.

She doesn’t respond to that. She is tired, _exhausted,_ and all she wants is to _not_ feel.

“Beth, please, just come to New York,” he says, his voice pleading. “We can talk it out.”

And maybe they could. Talk the game against Borgov out. Talk out what went wrong, where she could have defended more, attacked more. But she doesn’t want that. And they have never been good at talking about anything else, she thinks.

“Beth?” Benny’s voice rings through the phone.

She can’t go back to New York. Can’t go back to the drab gray. But what’s more, she can’t go back to the colors she feels in Benny’s apartment. Can’t go back to where she can’t dull her senses, where she can’t numb them.

“Thank you, Benny, for everything,” she admits, truthfully.

There’s a sigh through the phone. “You shouldn’t be by yourself. You know what happens.”

She knows. And he knows. Had admitted it to him in the five weeks in his apartment, though he’d already guessed in Ohio.

“Maybe that’s what I want.”

“What, to get drunk?” Benny’s scorn is apparent, even through the phone.  
  


“Yeah, good and drunk. Fucking bombed. And maybe high too. Why not?”

She hadn’t particularly liked pot the one time she’d tried it. But who knows? What did it matter now?

She needs to numb her senses, needs to numb everything. And a drink and a pill will do just that.

“Well you wouldn’t, if you were with me.”

She knows this is the truth. But it’s not what she needs right now. Being with Benny brings everything in her _alive_ , like she’s on a razor’s edge. Her mind is sharpened, the colors sparkling, her touch to the pieces crackling with energy.

“I know.”

She needs to not think about chess, about Borgov, about losing. Needs to not be able to touch everything and it remind her of the game, needs the colors in her world to fade, just a little. Needs her mind to slip into that hazy fuzz the drink and pills bring.

Benny’s next words surprise her. “What if I said, okay, go ahead, get drunk? Would you come then?”

He is pulling out all the stops, it seems, desparate to get her to New York. Why, she doesn’t know.

Maybe he just wants to rip apart her game with Borgov, dissect it until there is nothing left. She’s not sure she can handle that.

Maybe he doesn’t want her talent to go to waste, wants to try to prevent her from being washed-up.

Maybe he cares.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Any way, it doesn’t matter. If she goes to New York and gets drunk, blacks out, Benny will see. Benny will see that the Beth he saw in Ohio, the US Champion, the Beth he invited back to New York because he believed in her, believed that she could beat Borgov (with a little training), will be revealed to be a sham.

Paris is has hollowed her out and all that is left is a shell of herself, like a faint outline in a charcoal painting.

And she doesn’t think she can handle Benny seeing that. Even if it’s just in black and white.

“Benny, I don’t know what I’m doing, or going to do,” she says.

But she does. She’s going to go home and get fucking bombed. She’s going to go home and go to Bradley’s and get her pills and numb out the world until all of _it,_ whatever this feeling is, whatever this sense is, _stops._ Until she can erase the pain, erase the muddled mess eating at her inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so I realized I'm definitely going to need 12 chapters to do this story the way I want haha.
> 
> Comments (even constructive criticism!) is always welcome and very very much appreciated!!!


	8. i hope you make it to the day you're 28 years old

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh I'm sorry for so long between updates. I've had a major case of writer's block this past week but I think I'm getting over it.

Beth returns from Paris to an empty house.

Mail has piled up and the house smells stale. She can’t tell if it’s the dust or the way the colors seemed to have dulled since Paris that puts a fine gray sheen around the room. Either way, she doesn’t really care.

The phone rings and it’s her lawyer, on about something with the house and Mr. Wheatley. She tells them to drop by. She’s not sure what to expect, from this man she knew all of a few weeks and then left.

Still, she prepares for their visit by dressing in Alma’s coat, if only to make herself feel better. 

Mr. Wheatley, if possible, looks more gray than when she knew him, and she couldn’t even see color back them.. He comes to her house and he sits, awkwardly perched on _her_ couch and says some bullshit about the house being hers.

Then he brings Alma into it, talking about the need to shut her up and calling her pathetic. She sees red for a minute, the color flashing before her eyes and a feeling of pure loathing for this man bubbles within her. 

“Did you ever hear her play?” Anyone who ever heard Alma, really heard her, would know she was not pathetic.

“Of course,” Mr. Wheatley says, not taking the time to think about his answer, just like he didn’t take the time to know Alma.

“Yes. But did you ever really listen?” Beth asks. She doubts he ever did. His lack of an answer confirms it.

“Alma was not pathetic, she was stuck. There’s a difference,” she tells him. “She didn’t know how to get out of it.”

Alma, who was stuck in a marriage with someone who wasn’t her soulmate, who tried and tried to make the best of her choice. But, Beth thinks, it really doesn’t matter that he wasn’t her soulmate. He’d make a lousy partner to anyone, soulmate or not.

“Pathetic, well…I’m looking at pathetic.”

As if confirming it, Mr. Wheatley shrinks from the comment.

Her lawyer tries to get back on track, asking Mr. Wheatley what he wants from her. He wants the house, but she can’t imagine giving up the house. Can’t imagine giving up the house she grew up in, the one she’s been keeping up, been making the payments on. Not to Mr. Wheatley, who ran away like a coward.

“I’ll buy it,” she says. “I’ll pay whatever your equity is.”

Mr. Wheatley insists his equity is more than it is, and she is too tired to fight it, so she agrees to his $7,000.

She can’t help the feeling of satisfaction when she tells him she’ll be deducting the expenses she paid to bury Alma.

-

Despite what Beth told Benny, she doesn’t get drunk, fucking bombed. The house gives her something to do, something to occupy her mind, something to take her mind off Paris.

She buys a new couch, the beautiful teal color accenting the wallpaper. She takes down the curtains but she keeps the color scheme, an ode to Alma, even though she couldn’t see colors and went by the signs in stores. Sometimes we all need a little help from signs, she thinks.

She pays the neighbor kid to mow the lawn, makes sure to water it to keep it a luscious green. She rearranges the closet in the master bedroom, putting her pretty dresses and clothes in there. She takes to wearing her favorite casual tee, the green one, around the house. It might be overkill, but no one is there to notice, and the green feels a little like rebirth.

Of course, Paris doesn’t fade away and disappear, however much she wishes it to. She doesn’t touch a board, doesn’t touch chess pieces for a few weeks, but she’ll still lie awake at night, playing games in her mind. Her game with Borgov is splashed across her mind in angry but vibrant colors. She replays the game, sets it up in her mind. When she finally settles it, the positions solidifying like watercolor brushstrokes, she finds the careless weak spots in her game. 

Sometimes, she wonders if her soulmate would have seen the holes in her game, would have filled them in for her. If she’d known her soulmate, would she have gone down to drink with Cleo that night and flirted with men who lied? After all, isn’t a soulmate supposed to bring out the best in you or something?

She’s figured for a while now that her soulmate plays chess. It would just make sense. But she has still never found him. Or her, she supposes. Though if it were a her, she probably didn’t play chess, since the Cincinnati tournament had no other female entrants besides her. Maybe though, it wasn’t someone who played chess. Maybe it was a waitress or a hotel concierge or a random stranger at the hotel. But, for the life of her, she can’t imagine having a soulmate who doesn’t play chess. That would be like a queen piece without a king. Useless and disappointing, a mistake on the manufacturer’s part.

Either way, she thinks, it really doesn’t matter. Her soulmate wasn’t there and she was hungover and she lost to Borgov. Maybe it didn’t even matter that she was hungover. Maybe she’s not good enough. Maybe her soulmate really is some random non-chess playing person and the universe has been trying to tell her that she’s not cut out for chess.

She pushes it all, _Paris, soulmates, losing,_ out of her mind.

-

One day, Beth returns home to a letter from some organization named Christian Crusade, inquiring about her interest in their support for the upcoming Moscow tournament.

She’s not even sure she’ll go to Moscow now, not sure if she’s good enough, if it’ll just be an even worse repeat of Paris. Still, the letter intrigues her, so she calls Benny to tell him about it.

“Take the money. They’re loaded,” he says without hesitation. Benny is always so sure of himself, she thinks. She wishes she could be that way. Then again, she’s sure she appears that way to others. Maybe, on the inside, Benny isn’t so sure of himself. She thinks about his hesitation on the night they slept together, how she still doesn’t know what he was going to say, if he was going to say anything at all. Or if all he wanted to talk about was the damn Sicilian after all. She quickly pushes the thoughts out of her head and tries to focus on the conversation.

“If you need to play another match before, they’ll back you,” he says. “And if you ask them, they’ll fly me out there with you.”

She thinks about it, flying out to Moscow with Benny. He could help her during adjournments, help read the players while she was focusing on her next move, point out weak spots in her strategy, help her find them in her opponents. And he would make sure she wouldn’t drink.

Benny continues, “Separate rooms, of course, considering their views.” Of course. Daily chapel at Methuen had taught her as much. Beth’s not sure she’d even want separate rooms, or if it’d be any use, the way she and Benny were like magnets to each other. But, if the organization wanted to pay for it, she supposes she shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. It’d be easy enough to get around, if they wanted.

Still, she can’t help asking. “Why would they pay so much?” Methuen also taught her to be suspicious of anyone claiming charity and good will.

“They want us to beat communists for Jesus,” he says, a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “These are the same people that paid for part of my way two years ago.” _At least they’re good for their money,_ Beth thinks. She could really use it, especially since she just spent most of her money on the house.

“Are you…coming to New York?” Benny asks. There it is, that question again. The one he’d asked her before, right before she’d gotten on a plane back to Kentucky after Paris, before she’d told him she needed to go get drunk.

She’s not really sure why he’s so intent on her coming back to New York. To train? Look how much good that did her last time, she thinks bitterly. She’d showed the whole world that she was a _loser._ A muddled mess of a loser.

“I have to stay in Kentucky a bit longer,” she says. “I have a tournament in San Francisco, and I need to take care of this place now.” It’s true, she needs to keep the place up, especially after sinking so much money into it. Plus, she should go play the San Francisco tournament. At least there, she knows she’s basically guaranteed the win.

She says this, and it’s the truth, but not the whole truth. She can’t help but think that she’s not sure she could stand seeing Benny right now. Or more precisely, she’s not sure she could stand Benny seeing her now, how he would look at her, this girl who lost it and then _lost._ She thinks about how he looked at her after she’d won that night at speed chess in the simultaneous, how there’d been admiration and pride and sheer amazement in his eyes, like he was just suddenly seeing color and she was a damn rainbow. She doesn’t think she could handle seeing it replaced with pity and disappointment. Even if it is in black and white, even if he can’t see the slight difference in her coloring, the sallow in her cheeks from days on end just rethinking her game with Borgov.

There’s silence, and even through the phone, she can tell that Benny is worried for her. Can tell he’s worried about the booze.

“I’m fine, Benny, really,” she assures him. She needs to switch the topic. Now. “How are you?”

“I’m managing,” he says. But Benny has never let her get away with anything. “…I miss you.”

And there it is. _God, why is he saying this?_ Beth thinks. He says he misses her, but she’s sure he misses Beth, the winner. Now she is Beth, the loser, a flattened rendering of herself.

She doesn’t know how to respond, so she doesn’t say anything. Besides, what is she supposed to say? I miss you back? These days, she’s not sure she feels anything at all. In fact, she’s been trying very hard not to feel anything at all.

Benny sighs. “Study the game pamphlets from the last Moscow Invitational,” he says, reverting back to mentor mode, dispensing advice.

“I’m not even sure I’m gonna go.” What’s the point? Borgov has already shown _twice now,_ that he can beat her.

“Just do it, Beth,” he says, his voice taking his irritated tone. _What does he have to be annoyed about?_ Beth thinks, getting irritated herself. “Tell them you will take all the help that they give you.”

She says okay, just to get him off her back and then hangs up. When has help ever really helped her, anyway?

-

Despite herself, Beth retreats to the only world she has ever been entirely comfortable in: the 64 black and white squares of the chessboard. She takes Benny’s advice and starts to play through the most recent Moscow Invitational games. If she does end up going, it will be a tough set of games, and not just against Borgov. Luchenko, whose games she has studied since she got into chess, will be there, as well as other top Soviet players.

She studies them, immersed in the clear-cut black and white world, but even she needs a break. So she decides to go out to a restaurant, to treat herself. Besides, she is getting tired of canned food and sandwiches.

The waiter at the restaurant asks if she would like a drink, and at first she declines, saying Coke is fine. But then, maybe in a fit of nostalgia to Alma, or maybe it’s something else, she orders a Gibson.

The first sip reminds her of Alma, of a time before she lost to Borgov, of forgetting, and so she orders another one. And then she stops on the way home at Lex Liquors and drinks straight from the bottle. It takes the sting of her loss against Borgov away, makes everything a little more fuzzy, a little less sharp, a little less painful.

She drinks and drinks and drinks.

-

It becomes a habit.

The booze takes away the sting of the world, reduces the vibrancy, makes it all bearable.

She sees women in the department stores with Lex Liquors bags as full as hers and she’s reminded of Margaret. Margaret with her soulmate and her baby and her bag of Lex Liquors. Margaret might have a soulmate, and Beth might have a soulmate, but in that moment, Beth relates to Margaret more than she ever thought possible.

What good is seeing color when all you want is a goddamn drink? You don’t need color to tell which drink you want or when you’ve played a lousy game of chess.

Still, sometimes, after she’s popped a few pills and drank a few beers and is zoned out watching pictures move on the screen, she’ll think about her soulmate, about colors.

She thinks that it’s probably better off that she doesn’t know who they are, that they don’t know who she is. They’ve both gotten the benefit of seeing colors without the burden of each other.

And really, what is she besides a burden?

Yes, it’s better off that she doesn’t know her soulmate. She has known that all she has ever needed is chess and the pills and booze. And now she’s not even sure she needs chess. Or, more accurately, if chess needs her.

-

Beth continues her days on like this, until the local tournament director calls her and asks her to come to the Kentucky State Championship early to pose for photos.

She arrives with a splitting headache and _god, she just wants to go home so she can drink._

The tournament director has the gall to tell her that she can’t smoke inside, so she does the sensible thing and walks out to smoke outside.

And while she just wants to smoke her damn cigarette in peace, Harry Beltik shows up. He shows up with that sweet smile of his and that guileless demeanor of his.

She asks him what he’s doing here, she thought he stopped playing after all, and he tells her he’s there to check up on her. And then he says “I’m worried about you.”

“What on earth for?” Harry Beltik has no right to be worried about her, she thinks. Walking around like he’s her damn keeper or soulmate (not that she would let her soulmate, whoever they are, boss her around like this) or whatever.

“I’ve seen you once or twice at the supermarket.” This is a surprise to Beth. She’s never seen Harry at the supermarket. Though, if she’s being completely honest, when she’s at the supermarket, she’s pretty much focused on one thing only.

“You following me?” she asks.

“I work there.” Isn’t he supposed to be in college? She must say something to that effect aloud, since he launches into an explanation for why he works there and she must say something back, but honestly, she doesn’t really care. She should go back in soon, to defend her title, but all she’s really thinking about is when she can go back home, to the peace and quiet and booze of her house.

“….Like I said, I’m worried about you,” Harry says. She knows she’s been talking but she hasn’t really been keeping track of the conversation. Still, she recognizes that tone of voice.

“Sounds more like you’re feeling sorry for me,” Beth says, incensed.

“I didn’t say that.”

“I’m not the one supposed to be in college, not working in a supermarket,” she says. Maybe if she insults him enough, he’ll realize she’s not worth being worried about, and he’ll leave her alone.

But Harry doesn’t flinch. “I’m doing both.” He keeps his eyes on her. “You know what? Yeah, I like working there. It’s a good job, and the people are nice.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that so she just puffs on her cigarette. God, she needs a drink.

“Elizabeth!” Mr. Spencer calls. She looks back at the tournament director, annoyed that he interrupted her conversation, even if she wasn’t particularly enjoying it. Why won’t people just leave her alone these days? That’s all she wants.

Harry looks at her with pity in his eyes, similar to when he’d told her to “be careful” when he’d left. But Harry has never seen her, never truly seen her. Because if he had, if he’d seen all of her, he wouldn’t be here, still thinking that she was worth something.

“Good luck, Beth,” Harry says, before getting into his car.

She watches as his car drives off, and then she ignores Mr. Spencer’s callings of her names and she doesn’t even take a cab, she runs home.

When she gets there, she closes the curtains, as if she could block out the bright, yellow light, as if she could block out the world’s eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments appreciated as always.
> 
> I will try to have the next chapter us soon-ish!


	9. and now she's so devoid of color, she don't know what it means

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> join the the Beth/Benny shippers discord and join me and other people rant/rave about Beth and Benny and fic and memes and all that good stuff: https://discord.gg/Xn3GD6c8

Beth’s napping, trying to sleep off the tournament and just forget when there’s an insistent banging at her door.

Ugh. It’s probably Harry. She doesn’t know why he keeps trying. Can’t he just give up on her? She’s not his soulmate and she’s not his problem. She just wants some goddamn peace. She’s ready to tell him off, to just leave her alone.

But when she flings open the door, it’s not Harry.

It’s Jolene.

She’s not sure she believes it at first and the surprise must come out in her voice. “Jolene?”

This is the first time she’s ever seen Jolene in color. And even besides that, this woman, while she still has the same face and smile, the same appraising eyes, is decidedly _grown up._ But she’s sure it is Jolene. She always thought Jolene was beautiful, but this Jolene is stunning, holding herself as if the world belongs to her. It’s the opposite of how Beth feels.

Those same appraising eyes Beth remembers so well must think the same thing. The woman takes her in, asking, _“Who the hell are you?”_

-

Jolene takes in her house. She sees the pretty wallpaper, the nice furniture set, the grand piano with her trophies on top. Beth’s also sure that Jolene notices the thin layer of dust that’s settled over the furniture, the empty beer cans strewn around, the day-old takeout containers.

“Mr. Shaibel died,” Jolene tells her. “There’s a funeral day after tomorrow. I thought, we could go together.”

 _Mr. Shaibel died?_ Mr. Shaibel, who taught her chess, who dealt with her questions and her attitude, even if it was in his own stand-offish way. She still owed him $10, from that first tournament. She never sent it.

And now Mr. Shaibel was dead. She’d never get the chance to send it.

She doesn’t know how to react, so she doesn’t.

-

Later that night, after Jolene gets settled in, she tells her a little about her life. She went to college, became a political science major and is now working as a paralegal, saving up for law school. She wants to be a radical. Jolene may not be on magazine covers or winning trophies, but she’s also still not taking little green pills from the orphanage. Beth can’t help but be faintly jealous of the order that Jolene seems to have a hold on.

As she’s getting into bed, Jolene places a bottle of the pills on her dresser. She knows what she’s thinking. But who is Jolene to judge? She’s had enough judging from Harry and Benny and god knows who else, already. If anyone, Jolene should understand. The orphanage made her this way. Besides, is sleeping so bad?

“I still take them,” Beth says, just a tiny bit defensive.

“Looks like you’re doing a lot more than pills, honey.”

“Haven’t had anything today,” Beth says. It’s true. She hasn’t.

Jolene voices her next thought. “Not yet, anyway.”

Beth quickly changes the subject. She doesn’t want to talk about this. “I’m supposed to go to Russia at the end of the year.” And then she admits what she hasn’t admitted to anyone else. “I’m afraid.”

As always, Jolene gives practical advice. “Then don’t go.”

But it’s not as simple as that. She’s afraid, afraid of going against Borgov again. But she’s more afraid of what will happen if she doesn’t go. If she sits here and drinks. She tells Jolene as much and laments about all that she has to do to go there.

If she was expecting sympathy from Jolene, she doesn’t get it. Instead Jolene tells her that stopping the wine and cleaning up would be a good place to start. “You sound like Susan Hayward in one of those movies,” Jolene tells her.

Beth ignores that, continuing on her thoughts. “I read about this pop artist once. Bought an original drawing by Michelangelo. When he got it home, he took a piece of art gum, and just erased it. Leaving nothing but a blank page.” She pauses, somehow comforted by relaying the story. “I remember being really shocked by that. Now I wonder if I haven’t somehow erased my own brain.” It’s true. Sometimes she feels as if she’s a watercolor, a masterpiece, that someone’s somehow washed away, leaving only the charcoal outline. She tries not to wonder if the washing solution was alcohol. Tries not to wonder if she didn’t take a filter and make her own world black and white once again. Drinking. Going out with Cleo. Losing to Borgov. Pushing Benny away. It’s as if someone has taken the color from her world and replaced it with muted, desaturated versions of itself. It’s not gray exactly, but it’s not in full, prismatic color either.

“Let’s pretend that you didn’t just compare yourself to Michelangelo,” Jolene starts, though she smiles. “And let’s look at where you’re at. Which, after being here all of five minutes, looks like it’s at the bottom of a fucking hole. And it looks a lot like you dug it yourself.” She adds, “My advice: stop digging.”

Jolene is right. She is at the bottom of a hole and she can’t seem to stop digging, as if there’s the promise of gold at the bottom. But there is no such thing there. Still, Beth can’t help herself from arguing. “Well, maybe it’s in my blood. My mother went crazy.” She remembers her childhood, her mother’s erratic rants, the unexplained running away from her father, and then, finally, the crash. And her mother didn’t even drink.

But it doesn’t matter. Not really. Jolene’s advice is solid, as always. It won’t do her any good to think about it.

For all her tough love, though, Jolene knows when to lighten the mood. She presents Beth with her missing _Modern Chess Openings_ book, the one she scurried to find as she was told to pack up her belongings as she was adopted by the Wheatleys.

It’s not a solution to her problems, not by far, and neither is Jolene. Beth knows this, but still, she can’t help but feel somewhat less alone.

-

Beth agrees to go with Jolene to Mr. Shaibel’s funeral. Though she knows it’s more for her sake than anything else. As far as she knows, Jolene hardly knew the man. She’s here for Beth.

In the car, Jolene tells her that she’s dating her boss, who wants to marry her. After he divorces his wife. Though it doesn’t sound like Jolene is very attached to her job or her boss, Rick.

“So do you see color now?” Beth asks after being filled in on some more of the details about Jolene’s current relationship.

“No,” Jolene says. She says it matter-of-factly, not seeming too heartbroken nor happy about it. Beth is confused at first. But then she thinks of her relationships, for lack of a better word. With Tim. With Harry. With Benny. With Cleo. How she wasn’t soulmates with any of them, but each had felt important in their own way at the time. How some still felt important, even if she couldn’t put her finger on why exactly. “It doesn’t make a difference,” Jolene continues. At this, Beth’s confusion returns.

It must show on Beth’s face, because Jolene starts to explain. “I don’t need to see color to know that it doesn’t make a difference. Lots of people can’t see colors like whatever a rainbow is supposed to look like, but they still see _my_ color.” Jolene clicks her tongue. “Being Black wasn’t ever really about skin tone, it was about white folks oppressing people and enslaving them. That’s why they had things like the one-drop rule.” She taps her fingers on the steering wheel. “It don’t matter, for folk like me, whether you can see color or not, because everyone will still judge you on what they think your color is. But phenotype is just the half of it. It’s about power and oppression. That’s why I’m going to become a radical. We got to change to that.” 

Beth never really paid attention in history classes, even once she left Methuen and had a shot at a normal life. She doesn’t really know too much about her history, doesn’t know a lot about color or race in the way Jolene is talking. Sure, Jolene would go on rants, at the orphanage, talking about how she never had a chance, not with the dainty, pale couples that would drive up looking for a proper white girl to adopt, but Beth had always been too engrossed in her copy of _Modern Chess Openings_ to really notice any patterns besides the one in the book and the ones on the ceiling.

And when she’d started to see color, she hadn’t really noticed people’s skin. Though, now that she thinks about it, her whole neighborhood was white. All the chess tournaments she entered were also white. She knows the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, but she hadn’t really paid much attention to it or the issues surrounding it, since it hadn’t affected her. But it’d obviously affected Jolene. Suddenly, she feels a bit ashamed.

“It’s not that great,” Beth says, quietly. “Seeing color, that is.”

Jolene turns to look at her. “Shit, cracker, you can see color now?” Beth nods. She hadn’t meant to divert the conversation back to her. “Well, you always was the lucky one. Who is it and where the hell they at?”

Beth sighs, supposing she did open the door to this conversation. “I don’t know,” she says. Jolene looks at her, arching her perfectly shaped eyebrows up. Beth quickly explains, how she started to see color, how she really, truly, has no idea who her soulmate is. How it hasn’t made that much of a difference in her life.

Jolene “hmms” as Beth explains. Then, “You really don’t have any idea who it is?”

“No, I don’t,” Beth says, truthfully. Somedays, she wishes she did. Maybe if she did, if she knew who her soulmate was, they’d be here with her. Maybe she wouldn’t drink so much, wouldn’t have to take the pills, to not feel so empty. Maybe.

“Well,” Jolene says. “Maybe it’s for the better.”

“Maybe,” Beth replies.

-

They stop by the trailer where Beth grew up.

It looks different in color, if possible. It shouldn’t be possible though, because it’s ostensibly the same. Of course, no one has lived there for years. The windows are covered up with threadbare blankets, the paint even more chipped off. But somehow, in color, it looks even more drab than she remembers it.

Jolene asks how they ended up here, if her mother came from money and married into more.

It’s a long story, and Beth doesn’t even really know all of it, only what she could put together from her mother’s ramblings.

She remembers a particularly unhinged rant of her mother’s, when she’d decided it was best to burn things from her old life. She’d talked about stupid, useless soulmates. Beth remembers what she’d told Jolene the other night. Her mother went crazy. Now, she wonders if the soulmate was a part of that.

But, Jolene’s words of wisdom come back to her. It doesn’t really matter. Beth doesn’t know her soulmate, she probably never will. And she’s got bigger problems to deal with.

-

They stop by Metheun before heading to Mr. Shaibel’s funeral. Beth was going to go in, but when they arrive outside, she can’t force herself to get out of the car. The place is the same, looks and feels just as life-sucking as it did, color or not.

This place, where she spent a good formative years of her life. Where she first tried, and got hooked, on little pills that help her sleep at night. Where Miss Lonsdale had told them, little girls abandoned by the world, that “choices have consequences,” and that they were there because “your parents made certain choices.” They were told that they would need to learn to make different choices. Beth laughs to herself. Look how well that turned out. She’s less sure by the day that she won’t still end up like her mother, won’t end up crazy and drunk and making all the wrong choices. Maybe it never was a choice at all. But, no, she can’t think that way. She has choices. Just like she has choices when she picks up a piece and chooses to play the Queen’s Gambit. To accept or decline it. Even during the middlegame, even in the endgame, she has choices. She can choose what’s the best move, what risk and reward will pay off, what she thinks her opponent do. She will make different choices. Different choices than her mother, but also different choices than Methuen drilled into her head. (Mrs. Deardoff’s _no more chess_ grates in her head).

She turns to Jolene. “I just realized I don’t ever wanna go back in there again.”

-

They go to Mr. Shaibel’s funeral together. They are the only ones, as far as Beth can tell, from Metheun. Not even his supposed sister showed up. The preacher gives some standard homily. The faces that are in the pews are blank.

She knew it wasn’t going to be easy, being at Mr. Shaibel’s funeral. When she never really thanked him, when she never paid him back. Suddenly, she can’t be here. Not in this church, with these people who probably didn’t know Mr. Shaibel, or barely knew him, saying platitudes that could be found at any funeral, any color of his life erased. 

_Will this be what her funeral is like?_ She thinks.

“I changed my mind,” she tells Jolene. She knows what she needs to do.

-

Jolene drives back to Metheun. “I’ll only be a minute,” Beth tells her. And she means it.

The place, like all the places today, is the same, but different. Seeing color, she thinks, wouldn’t have helped much. It is dark and dim and drab, the lifelessness squeezing any cheer from the little girls who walk through the door, trying to compress them into some shape of some perfect little orphan, just happy to have a roof over their head. And when chapel and the boring monotony of life there couldn’t do it, there’d been pills to compel them into docile submission. But Beth had always wanted more. (Doesn’t everybody?)

Mrs. Deardoff, with her broken hip, and her cane, sees Beth. Her eyesight has apparently gone significantly as well as her walking ability. “You should be in chapel, young lady,” she reprimands.

Beth thinks about hurling a thousand nasty insults at her, a thousand offenses that she wouldn’t be able to defend against. But the only thing that rises to her throat is, “Yes ma’am.”

When Mrs. Deardoff is gone, she walks down to the basement, unlocked in Mr. Shaibel’s absence. It’s dark, like it always was, the white of the sinks where she used to clean the erasers the brightest part. But the part that still attracts her is the scuffed desk Mr. Shaibel sat at, where she’d first gone and boldly asked him what game he was playing.

She sits at the desk. There is only one chair now. Like he kept playing against himself after she left.

She wonders if Mr. Shaibel could see color. She remembered when she’d asked him what colors the pieces were, her surprise, and delight, when he’d answered that they were black and white. How she hadn’t felt at a disadvantage for not being able to see color. How chess would be the same for everyone. But she doesn’t know if he could see color, if he’d found or met his soulmate. It doesn’t matter, she supposes.

And then it catches her eye. There is a corkboard pinned to wall, dotted with black and white newspaper articles, with a hint of the _Chess Review_ red in some places. She goes to look closer. It is every article printed about her, every magazine cover, every little clipping about her, from her first win at the Kentucky State Tournament, to her match in Paris. And in the middle is the photo that Mr. Ganz took of them. The first photo that was ever taken of her. And a few spots over, the only speck of blue on the board, is her note to him, asking for $5 to enter the tournament, with her broken promise of sending him $10. He’d hung it up like a trophy to her.

She grabs the photo of her and Mr. Shaibel, both of them unsmiling, and darts to Jolene’s car. She makes it there before she starts crying. The tears run down her face in globs, and she can’t stop them. It’s too much, it’s all too much. Mr. Shaibel dying. Her broken promise to him. The newspaper clippings declaring her genius and her potential. Her flushing it all down the drain these last few months, chased by alcohol and pills. Beth losing to Borgov. Her inability to handle the loss. The trailer where she grew up and her mother’s madness manifested. Her constant fear that she’ll go crazy.

Miss Lonsdale was wrong, that all the girls were there at Methuen because their parents made choices. But she was also right, Beth thinks. She can learn to make better choices. At the very least, she tells herself, she can try.

Even if she has somehow erased herself, she’s now in control of the canvas, of the colors, of her choices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it turns out I am very productive about fic while in the midst of a mental breakdown so yay?
> 
> Sorry for taking so long to update this. The good news is that I actually have the next chapter already written since I initially wrote the next section as part of this chapter, but then it ended up being too long for the pacing I was giving this fic, so I split it into two! I'll probably upload it on Tuesday/Wednesday depending. 
> 
> Bad news is that I have once again expanded the chapter count, since in looking over my outline, I realize I will actually need 15 chapters! But the good news is that I have the last two chapters still basically written out (lol they've literally been written out since the start of the fic since I've always known where I'm going with this, but I'll probably need to go back and edit them heavily). (BUT plus, one of the chapters will be pretty heavy smut, if that's any consolation and if I didn't expand the chapter count, I'd probably cut out the smut soooo...)
> 
> Thanks for reading and comments are appreciated as always! :) Join the discord :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you feel like it, please leave a comment because I love attention lol


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